Tell me of your dream.
MONK.
The yearning of my heart, my sole desire, That like the sheaf of Joseph stands up right, While all the others bend and bow to it; The passion that torments me, and that breathes New meaning into the dead forms of prayer, Is that with mortal eyes I may behold The Eternal City.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Rome?
MONK.
There is but one; The rest are merely names.

I think of it As the Celestial City, paved with gold, And sentinelled with angels.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Would it were.
I have just fled from it.

It is beleaguered By Spanish troops, led by the Duke of Alva.
MONK.
But still for me 't is the Celestial City, And I would see it once before I die.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Each one must bear his cross.
MONK.
Were it a cross That had been laid upon me, I could bear it, Or fall with it.

It is a crucifix; I am nailed hand and foot, and I am dying! MICHAEL ANGELO.
What would you see in Rome?
MONK.
His Holiness.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Him that was once the Cardinal Caraffa?
You would but see a man of fourscore years, With sunken eyes, burning like carbuncles, Who sits at table with his friends for hours, Cursing the Spaniards as a race of Jews And miscreant Moors.

And with what soldiery Think you he now defends the Eternal City?
MONK.
With legions of bright angels.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
So he calls them; And yet in fact these bright angelic legions Are only German Lutherans.
MONK, crossing himself.
Heaven protect us?
MICHAEL ANGELO.
What further would you see?
MONK.
The Cardinals, Going in their gilt coaches to High Mass.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Men do not go to Paradise in coaches.
MONK.
The catacombs, the convents, and the churches; The ceremonies of the Holy Week In all their pomp, or, at the Epiphany, The Feast of the Santissima Bambino At Ara Coeli.